Nerf My Shaman

Sunday, 8 June 2008

→ So far, I have hit 1838 in 2vs2 (Shaman / Restokin Druid) and 1818 in 3vs3 (Shaman / Warrior / Paladin). No 5vs5 team yet→ Cromagnonman had stopped Wow two months ago because of real life concerns. Fortunately, an old friend Eydis was kind enough to join our team→ We plan to try Shaman / Restokin Druid / Warrior in 3vs3→ You can see my UI at this adress : http://elitistjerks.com/774310-post327.html→ The new Frostband rank rocks !

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.

Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.

Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.

Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.

Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.

Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.

Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.

Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

Hunter

Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.

Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.

Hunter's Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter's Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter's Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.

Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Mages

Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 50%.

Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.

Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.

Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostbite effect.

Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.

Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.

New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slow.

Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Paladins

Avenger's Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Divine Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.

Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.

udgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.

Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.

Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.

Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.

Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.

Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to Turn Evil. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priests

Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.

Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

Sap mechanic changed from Incapacitate to Sap. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Friday, 15 February 2008

We touch 1748 Wednesday then drop to 1708 after two insane games we lost. We played about fifty games, blowed up some common-RMP, still loosing to the ones with very good execution. It's all about destroying, rampaging, locking the mage in the addition of all I have said in my previous post about them... And don't forget to use your trinket when you are about to be shatter-combo'ed !

The road to 1850We are sure and confident about our strength. We have beaten some 1800+ teams (playing at 2:00 AM probably helps), we were never clearly out-skilled in the games we have lost. Our main losses were due to bad focus or strategy, never really on a guy screwing up the game like we have seen before. I clearly have to work on my Tremor totem positioning; it is way too easy for my priest/locks opponents to destroy it then fear me or my friends (or both). I need a better timing of my grounding totem: polymorph, cyclone, frostbolt just came to my mind as examples. I also have to re-do my focus macro because it is way too hard to be only dependant on mouseover to cs a target.

Blizzard, we wait for your moveAfter the chaos on the class forums (the shaman board were the place to be last week-end) we received some indirect feedback from Blizzard.

Quote from Blizzard staffSecond, there is more to come in 2.4 including class changes. I can't say how much as of yet because, again, it's based on testing and what results we get out of it. The developers do have things they want to do. As we go along, we should see more additions to the notes. I still can't give you an idea of just how much though. If we are able to give a better projection on our plans, we will though. I know that it's been a question on many people's minds and has come up many times since the initial notes were released for the PTR.

According to Gangbank Armory, I'm the 3rd Enhancement Shaman in 3vs3 on my ladder (Cataclysme) with 1705, first for Alliance. Cataclysme is considered for French-speaking people as Cyclone for UK. It is just sad that I'm this high in this rating with just 1k7. It's showing clearly where Enhancement Shaman is in the food chain now. As this PTR will probably last at least 2-3 months, I can't wait to see the projects Blizzard have for Shamans.

By the way, I received interesting critics from Blogazeroth community about my design, the lack of graphics and *ouch* my English. I will try to make the most of those comments, beginning by enhancing (ahah) my template and correcting more carefully before I post.

Monday, 11 February 2008

It's been six months I'm posting here to talk about my experience as a Shaman. I was motivated by reading Phaelia, Megan or Ming with his Naruto schizophrenic attitude. Not finding anything really interesting (or updated) on Enhancement Shaman I decided to create my own diary.

My first idea was to do a heavy PvE theorycrafting blog, with lots of graphs, calculation and so. But life had more imagination than me. Due to personal concerns (I found a new job, have moved house two times in the last year and a girl entered in my life *emo*) it was hard to maintain 4 to 5 raids per week. Then I had to quit my raiding guild, get back in my first lovely guild and decided to have an in-depth look on the PvP side of the game.

Even if playing an Enhancement Shaman ain't the best situation for an ArenaFanBoi, I don't regret this move at all. PvP is the real school of this game : I simply didn't know how to play until the last 6 months and my heavy involvement in arenas and battlgrounds (remember, I was a Naxxramas attuned hardcore raider/theorycrafter pre-BC, 6 raids a week was usual for me).

Now, my little guild is ready for Karazhan (the first will be next Sunday) but our objective is far different as before. We want to farm the PvE content to acquire PvP items. No competition, no who-will-1st-kill-this-or-that, no extensive farming, no more than two raid sessions per week.

So, why are you still reading my blog?What made you come the first time?What type of contents do you want to see in the future?

P.S : If you want to find a blog with Enhancement PvE data, check Asirae blog. He updates often and provides really excellent personal data.

Sunday, 10 February 2008

Yesterday I have farmed 4k honours points on my Shaman. I'm now 17/25k on the road for my Gladiator's Salvation. I have still to afford two PvP Epic Gems then the 75k for S4 preparation.

The thing is, I would like to have some time to reroll in order to better know the other class mechanisms. I would like to have 9 Level 70 from different classes. And play with them. I will definitely not try to get them all competitive, but I really find that you should have a minimal knowledge of each class to fully understand and enjoy the game, the patch impacts and so much more. And have fun. Megan is my hero on this side.

I have a level 70 Shaman, a level 62 druid, a level 57 warrior, a level 39 *twink* Warlock. I would like to level my druid to 70. I would like to have a 70 disc Priest. I would like to level a Paladin.

But I can't afford that time due to the fact that I want to be competitive with my Shaman, I want my teammates to be proud of me, I want to show them that they were right to put their confidence in me. Remember that I'm no more a very hardcore since more than one year and Naxxramas (best instance ever). I work full time as financial analyst, play typically 3 nights per week and some Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I just chill with my girlfriend or reading. It's between 20 and 30 hours dedicated to gaming per week. I am a big player for my girlfriend, a casual one for my ex-guildmates. I would say serious casual myself (expression stolen from EJ).

This serious casual attitude prevent from being an Alt-aholics given to the fact that I don't have the time to dedicate myself seriously for the moment to more than one avatar. When my Shaman will be completely itemizated, I will take time to move on my druid then other classes. My late comeback in Wow (70 last September) didn't work in my advantage on this level.

All this commitment to a class which is the less played in arena is kinda masochist isn't it ? I am not crazy. I strongly believe that in a soon future Blizzard will make something for us Enhancement in Arena. The little thing we desperately need to be as competitive as rogues or warriors in the arena competition.

Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.

Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.

Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.

Stormstrike has a new icon.

Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.

The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometime detonate without doing any damage.

You can read it all here : http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=4163.0

P.S : I was way too emo when I publish this note. I strongly believe that Blizzard has some plans for us. Anyway, I will perhaps take the reputation PvP gear and have some test with resto/elemental in Arena.

Healing Grace: Now also reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%

Shaman Gladiator 4-set bonus now reduces pushback by 30%, down from 70%.

So well, if this is true, it is the most, well, Elemental Shamans are messed up. There was debate on the blogosphere about how OP were Elemental Shamans with PI (Power Infusion: Spell damage and healing done increased by 20%.) in 5vs5 Arena. Specially after Inactive release some CLC videos where he has taken insane burst.

Having played Ele only during my Leveling, I don't know how much this nerf will impact for them in arena. But it's definitely a sad day for them.

Btw, the Earth Shield Change is really nice and with the Healing Grace modification, the output will be that it would be less mana efficient for dispeller (~250 mana) to put it off compared for the Shaman to re-put it on (450 mana).

For Enhancement, the Healing Grace talent will helps Shamanistic Rage not to be dispelled as soon as the BIG RED FACE pop up on your already big character (The Common Hey Scrub Dispell Me incentive) but it's nothing really interessant at all. It will just take perhaps one more pure to dispell a 41pt not-so-great talent on a 2mn cooldown. Cool. Shamanistic Rage at this current step is not worth 41pts. The fact is at the opposite of rogues/wars/mages/alltheother we do not have a lot of choices in the other talents trees to do a mix up as Shama first tiers are weak. This make me think that my old 0/40/21 specs could be the only exception.

The only really "nice" thing of this leaked patchnote is that the Tremor Totem/Poison pulsing reduced to 3 seconds. Because I am fed of being feared out of my Tremor Totem range. And it happens almost everytime I face a 'Lock.

We're still navigating between 1600 and 1700, losing basically to most RMP but improving our gameplay : we last longer and even win some rare times. Our stuff goes the same way, Freak bought his Vengeful gladiator leggings (up from a blue one) which is a great upgrade for him. He is now 207 resilience, nothing extraordinary but he will probably not explode as easy as before on the first switch from the opposite team now. Next upgrade for both of us is the Vengeful Helm which we will probably obtain the first week of March.

RMP : A never ending storyWell, we played better. Even versus power-levelling teams (about 10% of the teams we meet in 70+ games). We actually win a really nice game, perfectly LOSing both the manaburner priest and the mage, killing the rogue this way, during the blind of the priest. We know the basis of this match-up :

Everybody has to play very near his teammates. We put icons on our head in order not to be tempted to go too far from the rest of the team.

Sustaining the heavy damage. It's all about LOSing and healing.

Never. Ever. Tunnel Vision. If just one of us have Tunnel vision, the game is just ended. We lost two games because Cromagnonman exposing himself to a silence at a critical situation or me not LOSing at the right time.

Gladiator's SalvationBinds when picked upMace Main HandSpeed 1.6022 - 111 Damage(41.5 damage per second)+18 Intellect+28StaminaDurability 105 / 105Requires Level 70Equip: Improvesresilience rating by 18.Equip: Increases healing done by up to 375 anddamage done by up to 125 for all magical spells and effects.

Huh ? Why farming an healing mace for an Enhancement Shaman ?

Simply to outperform RMP when we have to burst-heal the focus target. If the focus don't explode, it's gg for us. For that and better Totem I have respeced 44/17 (And probably 42/19 at 2.4 for the dispell resistance -> Healing Grace: Now also reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30% ) . With the Improved Concentration Aura I have 92% antipushback and about 400 spell power with my AP. With this mace enchanted with +81 healing and my Totem of the Plain (Increases healing done by Lesser Healing Wave by up to 79), I will have +930 healing power on my Lesser Healing Wave which is perfect in those emergencies. I'll then use the following macro binded on my "4" button.

Wednesday, 30 January 2008

I'm wordless about how we feel frustrated last night. 1/3 of our loose where facing RMP. 1/3 versus Powerlevelling guild which outstuff us. 1/3 where due to RNG.

1/3 : RMPWell we have faced about 30% RMP teams last night. We killed some of them but most has ripped us down. Actually, we managed in a lot a game to take down the mage but we had taken so much damage to do it that it was easy for them to finish us. Our main problem was Cromagnonman (our Paladin) being silenced/ks at key moments.

2/3 : OutstuffBetween the "old" PvPers which are currently full stuffed, the Powerlevelling guys with S3 weapons and the wagon of PvPvErs who have access to Hyjal/BT stuff, we simply feel "low" sometimes. I can't count how many times we put our focus at less than 5%. Almost all our loses. But there is still those 5 %. On the other hand, we have seen our Paladin completely destroyed in no time on some focus fire when we were thinking to win.

3/3 : RNGWhen a Warrior crit you 5 times in a row one time you can cry. When it happens in almost every match you do in one night, you might consider to reroll a class with a "Oh Shit!" button. Something equal to IceBlock, Bubble, Vanish, Swiftmend/HoT/Travel form removing snares, Fear, Feign Death/Trap. Yeah, every class in this game but Shaman got this magic button which able you to do a partial reset of any 1vs1 situation. All I can do is pop out my shield and Shamanistic rage that will be dispelled in no time. But when I pop out my shield, I am gimping by an huge number my DPS and that results in the Focus target not being killed, and you know how reliant an enhancement shaman is in a long match with a base 5700 mana pool. No purge, no Stormstrike, no totem, I am a rogue without any cooldown bringing nothing on the table in this case.

Conclusions ?Due to our off-team, our gameplay, our composition, we have to win very, very fast. As said yesterday, this morning I had enough point to pop my S2 Mace, I will put Executionner on it tonight or tomorrow. To continue on itemization, I will put asap the Nethercobra Leg Armor patch on my S3 Pants and trying to upgrade my +6 strenght gem to +8 ones. BT gems are unavailable right now on our server (Sargeras-EU), but as there is two guilds facing Illidan now, I hope that in a near future we will have access to those. I am wondering about doing a minor respec also, still discussing with Freakhill.

Need More WeaponsI have read a very interesting article from Asirae today, confirming what I have read on EJ concerning weapons buffs. I will do and publish my own tests this week, with longuer testing sessions I think.

Personal message to Asirae : Let anonymous comment on your blog, it's a pain to have to logon on Wordpress >.Tomorrow I will have enough points to pick-up my S2 mace and I will try to put the Executioner enchant on it within the week. I do not think we will be able to pass the 1850 gap if we do not improve our DPS and this upgrade is a huge one for it. I will put my Fool's Bane in OH going for the first time with 2.6 - 2.6. I will probably put an Adamantite Chain on my Runic Hammer and put it out versus spam-disarming teams.

CompanionsFreakhill has "finished" his Cenarion Expedition reputation, so now he has the nice Glyph of Ferocity patch on his head and has crafted the Nightseye Panther this morning at 2:00 AM. Yeah, he plays the "who-will-sap-the-first" game. If we stay in this bracket, he will indeed have his second S3 piece in two week, he is thinking about taking the pants considering he already has the chest the the S1 gloves.

Cromagnonman is enjoying some retribution spec during is spare time, with me providing him some Windfury totem. He will respec tonight but I'm quite happy to have a Paladin who knows all specifies of his class, as we see and will more and more War-Druid-Retri those days. Ming has posted something about it.

Guild : Karazhan in the next month ?My happy guild will soon be able to run their first 10 men content aka Karazhan. Some have still to ding 70 and some have to do their access but I'm pretty confident that we will be able to do our first pull by the end of February. I will spec either Resto or Elemental if we have enough physical dps. I'm going to dig on Draezele website for the Resto itemization for sure. Just want to see new things.

I'm really happy that Elellion will be back soon on the PvE Scene. With two raids per week at most and beginning at the end of the BC Experience, I do not think we will be able to kill any major 25-man Boss of this game. But, progress together in another environment than the PvP one could be a really good experience for all of us. Especially when you try to do it withouth any type of Bossmod or spoils. A good way to develop skillshop in PvEimo.

ALT : Victime is levelling.Having all I could farm on my Shaman, I can at least level my Druid. I am now 61 3/4 and I hope to be 70 by the end of February, playing one or two nights per week. I decided to go Boomkin this morning after seeing that it would be too hard to count on instance-pugging to level quickly. Yesterday afternoon, I lost almost three hours in a pug with people afking or playing so bad that my baby panda cried. I'll stick on farming quests and instancing only with friends.

Btw, I have to post something about how bad is having Blacksmithing and Leatherworking now, particularly if you don't have access to high-end raiding.

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

Well I have read this fake patch note this morning, and I can't stop to tell myself that I would dream to see this live. So, instead of telling you about how incredible we were last evening on our 10-3 run- a Hunter-Druid-Priest group very well played is the cause of our real defeat - I will tell you about this fake patch.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.4.0The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com...patchnotes.htmlThe latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/The Sunwell Isle The Aldor and the Scryers have made their way to the Sunwell and finally put their petty squabbles aside to form the Shattered Sun Offensive against the demonic forces of Kil'jaeden and the corrupt Blood Elves led by Kael'thas Sunstrider. Shattered Sun Offensive representatives can be found in Shattrath recruiting Horde and Alliance alike for the battle for the Sunwell Plateau and the Magister's Terrace.

Nothing fancy. We already knew that.

General - Silence and Interrupt effects are now subject to diminishing returns.

OUCH. The first big one. Little definition (® Wowwiki) : Diminishing returns means that certain spells and abilities are less effective against player characters if they are used frequently within a short period of time. The table to the right contains a list of abilities that are affected by DR, and under what circumstances. So the fourth time my paladin will eat a interrupt (pummel, kick, earth shock) in a 15 second window, this interrupt will have no effect at all ? In this definition, does Silence and Interrupt will share the same DR ?

- The Sunwell Plateau is a 25-player, level 70 raid instance located on Sunwell Isle. Players will be able to face the demon lord Kil'jaedon himself. - The Magister's Terrace is a 5-player, level 70 dungeon located on Sunwell Isle. Players will be able to finish the fight with Kael'thas and his corrupt Blood Elves. Nothing new.- The Backpack has been redesigned. It will now start as a 10 slot bag, but it will gain 2 slots every 10 levels. New characters will be given an additional 6 slot bag. Existing characters below level 30 may have items moved to their mailbox that no longer fit in their Backpack. Players affected by this should also find a 6 slot bag in their mailbox.

Nice little tuning to bag management. But we all do already have this , level 1 toon with all 16 bags.

- Abilities and items with aura effects will no longer reach as far vertically as they do horizontally.

So we will not be able to put our totem above the bridge and battle on the ground. I think it is faire even if it was one of the unique way to not see our totem destroyed by a wand/moonfile rk1/priest hit. Oh dear, I would like to see our totems buffed by a % of our life.

- Several new emotes have been added to the game. Players that wish to make use of these emotes should use the "/emotelist" command. - Random-stat items that provide bonus healing will now properly provide approximately 1/3 bonus spell damage. - The troll Berserking racial no longer requires mana, energy or rage to use.- The gnome Escape Artist racial cooldown has been increased to 2 min, from 1 min 45 sec, but now provides a 5 sec immunity to movement impairing effects.

Rebuffing an ability they almost destroyed (I know, Freakhill is a gnome rogue) could be definitaly a good move. Currently Escape Artist is a joke compared to Perception, Stoneform or WOTF. Basically, this way gnome will have kind of a second. By the way, I wait for Gift of the Naaru to be buffed too. Why not beginning by correctly attribute us our spell power from AP on it ?

- The human Perception racial cooldown has been reduced to 2 min, from 3 min, but the duration has been reduced to 12 sec, from 20 sec. - The human Diplomacy racial now also increases healing received by 3%.

The Perception seems to be a really nice buff for human for me if correctly used. As for the healing received talent. What the point in that ? Well I know it is fake, but what the point ?

PvP- Additional bonus honor is now rewarded on a Battleground Holiday. - Picking up and dropping the Flag in a Battleground now has a distinct visual and auditory effect.- Warriors will now be able to use Commanding Shout and Battle Shout for free for a few seconds after being resurrected by a Spirit Guide in a Battleground. - The points awarded from capturing the flag in Eye of the Storm has been increased.

Nothing fancy, the next one is...

- During a period of excessive arena queue times the matching system will loosen its requirements, effectively reducing queue times, but resulting in less effective matching.

Could be a solution to not have to wait almost 2 hours to do ten 2vs2 battle.

Druids- Bash now deals 50% of normal melee damage. - Cyclone now has a 15 sec cooldown.- Celestial Focus: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Cyclone by 5/10/15 sec.

Oh. This would be a massive nerf to all 8/11/42 druids compositions, ungiving them the option heal (thanks instant) and completely anhilate a Paladin or a Shaman during long period of time (Cyclone/Charge/Repeat). Druids who are already playing the fun gunwrathing spec 24/0/37 will see their number increase.

- Frenzied Regeneration: The amount of health restored now scales slightly with bonus healing effects.- Swipe now generates additional threat.- Soothe Animal is now instant cast, down from a 1.5 sec cast time. - Control of Nature: This talent now also affects Hibernate.- Force of Nature: Treants now heal the Druid for a portion of their damage dealt to enemy targets. Some buff to Boomkins. But I don't think it will be sufficient to see those guys shining in arena in a large way.- Predatory Strikes: This talent now increases melee attack power by 15/30/45% of your Intellect. - Shredding Attacks: This talent now also gives the critical strikes from your Claw, Shred, Mangle and Maul abilties a 50/100% of reducing the effectiveness of the next direct healing spell on your target by 20%. - Savage Fury: This talent now also causes your Rake ability to reduce the target's movement speed by 25/50% for the duration of the bleed effect.

Bonus to DPS, Snare and Lil'MS effect, nice move. Feral does need some love and this buff would be beneficial for them, we could even see some matrix replacing Warriors by Feral Druids with those changes.

- Swiftmend: The cooldown has been increased to 18 sec, from 15 sec. A little nerf to Switmend, won't change the meta but will probably make Druids less OP.

- Improved Tranquility: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Tranquility by 1/2 min.- Remove Curse is now castable in Tree of Life Form.

Hunters - Hunter aspects no longer cost mana to cast and can now be switched while silenced.

This buff will provide a whole range of new things to do as an Hunter. Hawk/Monkey if focused and so. But...

- Aspect of the Beast will now also affect the Hunter's nearby party members. - Aspect of the Hawk now increases ranged attack power by 10%. - Kill Command: The damage bonus of Kill Command (Rank 1) has been slightly increased.- Feed Pet: This ability can now be used while in combat. - Viper Sting now scales slightly with ranged attack power and the cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec, but the duration has been increased to 12 sec, from 8 sec. - Serpent Sting mana cost reduced. - Volley now deals 50% weapon damage every 2 sec for 8 sec. - Concussive Shot now deals 50% weapon damage and the duration of the slow effect has been increased to 5 sec, from 4 sec. - Efficiency: This talent now also affects Volley.

Hey what about all those MM buffs ? Already one of the top class of the ladder, it's Survival tree which desperatly needs a buff.

- Aimed Shot now instantly applies 5 charges to the target and any direct healing spells that land on the target will expend 1 charge, lowering the healing penalty effect by 10%.

Coud be a nice mechanic. Does HoT should applies ? As it is not the core ability of the class, it is not something people will cry about. Not like the Warriors one.

- Trueshot Aura: This ability has been redesigned to increase the chance to hit with melee attacks, ranged attacks and spells of party members by 3%. - Silencing Shot now also acts as an interrupt effect, but the cooldown has been increased to 24 sec, from 20 sec. - Deterrence now also reduces the chance you will be hit by ranged attacks by 25%. - Entrapment: The snare effect now lasts 5 sec, up from 4 sec and is no longer subject to diminishing returns, but the talent has been moved deeper into the Survival tree.

Not enough for survival my friend, not enough. If this goes live, I can see the bus of Survival complaing about MMs OPness.

Mages - Ritual of Refreshment will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players. - Counterspell: The duration has been reduced to 6 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds. - Ice Lance now has a 6 sec cooldown.

People will cry.

- Spellsteal: It is no longer possible to remove a Shaman's Ghost Wolf buff with this spell. - Arcane Power: The spell damage bonus has been reduced to 20%, from 30%, but the mana cost penalty has been removed and it now also increases your chance to crit with spells by 5% for the duration.

I don't understand the point in this move. Could a mage explain me if this will change something in their gameplay ?

- Improved Blink has been replaced by Arcane Efficiency, a talent that reduces the mana cost of Blink, Counterspell and Spellsteal by 25/50%.- Slow: The mana cost has been reduced by approximately 24% and the duration reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec.

If the goal is to provide tools for Arcane Fanboi to do PvP, it is a failure. It is not in anyway something that will make Arcane mage to be in part of Ice or even Fire mages.

- Master of Elements: This talent now also reduces Fire and Frost damage taken by 2/4/6%. - Dragon's Breath: The disorient effect will no longer break on damage over time effects. - Icy Veins: The cooldown has been increased to 5 min, from 3 min and no longer increases your chance to Freeze targets, but now gives your damage spells a 30% chance of applying a chill effect, reducing the target's movement speed by 50% for 5 sec.

Ok, so now Fire mage will be able to chill you with a Fireblast. Freaky ! But give more viability to 3x/2x Fire builts.

- Frozen Core: This talent now increases the mana cost of your Fire spells by 2/4/6%, but reduces the mana cost of your Frost spells by 2/4/6%. - Ice Floes: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins. - Arctic Winds: This talent no longer increases all Frost damage done, but now increase the critical strike chance of your Frost spells by 1/2/3/4/5%. - Empowered Frostbolt has been renamed to Empowered Frost and no longer increase the critical strike chance of Frostbolt, but now also increases the amount of bonus spell damage that effects your Icelance spell by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Buffering the shatter-combo mechanism to give Frost mage more burst ? Is it necessary ?

Paladins - Holy Shock: The cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec and the amount of damage and healing done has been slightly increased. - Avenger's Shield: The cast time has been reduced to 0.5 sec, down from 1 sec. - Crusade: This talent now increases your spell damage and healing by 25/50% of your Strength.- Sanctity Aura now increases all damage done by party members by 4%, but the Holy spell damage bonus has been removed. - Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed. - Sanctified Reach (New Retribution Talent): Increases the range of your Judgement and Hammer of Justice spells by 25/50% and the range of your Hammer of Wrath and Repentance spells by 10/20%.

Buffs to Ret and Prot to give them more viability in raid mainly. Well, Coriel will speak much better than me on this one.

- Fear Ward is now considered a Discipline spell instead of a Holy spell. - Improved Fade: This talent now also causes your Fade spell to increase your chance to dodge by 5/10% for the duration. - The effects of your Mana Burn and Fade spells now scale slightly with Shadow spell damage. - Mana Burn now has a 6 sec cooldown. - Focused Power: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Mana Burn by 0.5/1 sec. - Silent Resolve: The threat reduction of this talent once again affects Shadow spells. - Force of Will: The spell critical chance bonus now affects all spells. - Pain Suppression now provides the target with immunity to dispell effects. - Shadow Affinity: This talent has been changed to reduce the threat generated by your Shadow spells by 4/7/10% and reduce the chance your Shadow spells will be resisted by 2/4/6%. - Shadow Focus has been replaced in the talent tree by Focused Mind. - Silence: The duration has been reduced to 4 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.

Jasi has done a great analysis, check his point. But the Fade change, the Mana burn CD and the Pain Suppression change seems really smart for me.

Rogues- Rogues can now generate combo points on up to 3 targets at any one time.

This one is simply brilliant and I think rogue have been dreaming about it since the release. How about transforming combo points as a new debuff, non dispellable ? It would result in both new offensive and defensives strategy.

- Cloak of Shadows: The cooldown has been increased to 2 min, from 1 min.- Your Sap and Distract abilities no longer require targets to be out of combat.- Sap now has a 15 sec cooldown.

Too much OP to be done. Rogue/Rogue teams in 2c2 will dominate.

- Blade Twisting: This talent now affects all abilities that generate combo points. - Preparation once again resets the cooldowns of all your Rogue abilities. - Premeditation and Preparation talents have swapped locations.

I'm mitigated about this one. Could a rogue comment about it ? How it would create new specs ?

- Cheat Death will now properly reduce damage taken by 90%.

Shaman \o/- Lightning Shield mana cost reduced and now grants Nature spell damage for each remaining charge. Solution for PvE Elementals ? Need much more precision on that but the idea could be interesting on fight where mana is not a problem.

- Water Shield now has a small mana cost and now grants mana every 5 sec for each remaining charge.

Fair I think. Water Shield with

- The spell damage coefficient of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells has been slightly reduced.

Well. Please. No. It was done before with the effect we knew. But wait... Does the Lightning Shield change has a link with it ?

- Ghost Wolf now frees the Shaman from movement impairing effects when cast, renders the Shaman immune to polymorph effects and can no longer be dispelled.

Do you want me to cry ? Is it exactly the kind of thing (with totem enhancement) that I desperately need as an enhancement shaman.

- Windfury Weapon now only grants 1 extra attack and the bonus attack power granted has been reduced by approximately 19%, but the chance to proc has been increased. Overall shamans should see more consistent dps. - Windfury Totem: The attack power bonus has been reduced by approximately 46%, but the chance to proc has been slightly increased.Overall the totem should see a slight decrease in effectiveness.

It totally kills my weekly two-shooting cure of 61-Green in Alterac with my big bad Hammer of the Naaru, but everything which could provide more DPS in overall is to be taken. I wonder how it could effect Shamans itemisation at all. Will do some theorycrafting about it later. For raids, totem-twisting addicts who use rank1 will saw an increase of their DPS in groups I think as we really doesn't care about the AP bonus provided.

- The bonus that Frostbrand Weapon and Flametongue Weapon receive from bonus spell damage effects has been slightly increased.

Slightly will not be enough Obiwan. But should be interessant to theorycraft if my DPS would be increased by putting this on my off-hand on high armor targets (druids, paladins).

- Frostbrand Weapon: The movement slowing effect has been increased to 40%, from 25%.

Did I said druids ?

- Bloodlust/Heroism: The duration has been reduced to 30 sec, from 40 sec and the cooldown reduced to 5 min, from 10 min.

Too good to be truth. This would be an huge increase of any raid DPS.

- Elemental Weapons: This talent now increases the damage caused by Rockbiter Weapon by 10/20/30% and the attack power bonus of Windfury Weapon by 15/30/45%.

Need more theorycrafting to speak about it.

- Stormstrike now grants a 30% spell damage bonus for the next 2 Frost, Fire or Nature spells cast by the Shaman.

5 to 10% of our DPS in raid now is from Shocks. How could this increase this percentage in raid, I don't know. In PvP, it would give us the ability to do a controlable burst on a target. But again, in PvP, our mana pool is much too low to rely on it on a long fight, even with Shamanistic Focus. Definitely good to take.

- Healing Grace: This talent now also reduces the chance your Restoration spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. - Focused Mind: This talent now also gives your spell criticals a 33/66/100% chance of reducing the cast time of your next healing spell by 0.5 sec. - Earthshield now has a 20 second cooldown, but the mana cost has been reduced by approximately 50%.

Just make Earth Shield undispelable like Pain Suppression then ? 30% is really not enough.Nothing on totem at all, if even the fake patch-noters forgot them...

Warlocks- Drain Mana now scales slightly with Shadow spell damage, but the base amount of mana drained has been reduced. - Drain Life and Drain Mana now share a 5 sec cooldown.- Ritual of Souls and Ritual of Summoning will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players. - Incinerate: The cast time has been increased to 3 sec, from 2.5 sec. - Spell Lock (Felhunter): The duration has been reduced to 4 seconds (rank 1) and 5 seconds (rank 2), and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds. - Soul Siphon: This talent once again affects Drain Mana. - Amplify Curse now also increases the effects of your next Curse of Weakness by 30% and Curse of Tongues by 10%. - Master Conjuror: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of your Spellstone by 30/60 sec. - Aftermath: This talent now also gives Incinerate an additional 3/6/9/12/15% chance of dazing the target. - Bane: This talent now also reduces the cast time of Incinerate, but no longer reduces the cast time of Soulfire. - Improved Firebolt has been renamed Demonic Destruction and merged with the effects of Improved Lash of Pain. - Improved Deathcoil (New Destruction Talent): Increases the duration of the Horror effect of your Deathcoil spell by 0.5/1 sec. - Conflagurate: The cooldown has been reduced to 6 sec, from 10 sec.

Nerf to the SL spec. Up for the Destruction specs. Drain Life/Mana on CD. Way to go !

Warriors - Rend now generates additional threat. - Spell Reflect: The rage cost has been reduced to 20, from 25, but now has a 8 sec cooldown.- Mortal Strike now instantly applies 5 charges to the target and any direct healing spells that land on the target will expend 1 charge, lowering the healing penalty effect by 10%. - Sweeping Strikes: The rage cost has been reduced to 25, from 30. - Weapon Mastery: This talent now reduces the chance your attacks will be parried, instead of dodged. - Blood Craze has been reduced to 2 ranks for 2/4% total health healed. - Rampage now also increases your chance to resist movement impairing effects by 10% and an additional 2% for each stack. - Concussive Blow now also deals 50% weapon damage. - Devastate now strikes with both weapons while dual wielding.

Wow, wow, wow. This nerf on MS will make baby panda cry in Warriors teams. It should even destroyed some setups coupled with the druid nerf. Also, the buff to devastate will give Prot Wars a way to farm more easily.

Pets - At maximum loyalty Hunter pets will no longer lose happiness from being idle. - Pets will now receive a percentage of their master's resilience and an additional percentage of their master's stamina. - Warlock and Hunter pets will no longer be automatically dismissed when you summon a mount. Instead pets will be dismissed when you take off with a flying mount and return when you land or dismount.

Pet receiving resilience and stamina is fair I think. Even if their masters classes are OP right now.

Items - The drop rates of many darkmoon cards have been increased. - Black Bow of the Betrayer: The triggered effect will no longer break crowd control effects.

Professions- Special fishing only items can now be acquired by fishing in high level zones. - Several new cooking recipes are now available at cooking trainers. - Profession daily quests are now available at Master profession trainers.

Nothing on Blacksmithing, Leatherworking. Hopefully, this is a fake \o/.

User Interface- The combat log functionality has been extended, including highlighted feedback and an extensive history. See the "UI & Macros" forum for further details. - Players can now view a list of ingame emotes by entering the following into chat "/emotelist". World Environment- Several flight paths have been adjusted to be shorter, faster flights. - The level requirement to enter Outlands has been removed. Bug Fixes- Abilties with charges will no longer prevent a player from overwriting the buff when it is below the maximum number of charges and is of lesser or equal strength. - Fixed a bug in which Cheat Death was reducing damage taken more than intended. - Fixed a bug in which the Royal Tanzanite and Irid Fire Opal gems were not properly granting spell damage. - Players that use mods should no longer have diffculty using Battlemasters or Flightmasters.- Fixed an issue with abilities that reset the cooldown of other abilities. - Fixed an issue with macros sometimes incorrectly reporting the error that an ability is not yet ready. See you soon for a real post this time.

We reach the 1k7 rating cap tonight !On our side we beat War-Druid-Lock 3 times straight, confirming that we were able to deal with those teams. I'll posta little more about this tomorrow, I'm going to bed now. But wow, what a night !

Wednesday, 16 January 2008

Not a really what we could call a good week. We only managed to play one night between 11PM and 3AM last Wednesday, after that our Paladin partner Cromagnonman got an important irl problem. As a consequence, he wasn't able to play the rest of the week (until now actually) and we wasn't able to test the adjustments to our strategies we made after this night.

W-L : 13-11, 1614 rating.We basically lost to all the RMP which were powerlevelling, which cause us to have only 20 or 19 points defeats. We won basically versus all the other ones, including War/Druid/Locks or War/Double healers. The fact that we weren't able to manage those Rogue/Mage/Priest teams has really annoyed us not to say more. So we worked on our plan. This is War.

For sure he has lost all the tools of his HARP specs, but we feel that it's better for the specific counter we want to create.

Now i'll make an effort to summarize how we plan to counter RMP, thanks to all we have read.

→Countering the Crowd ControlStay together in order to make them waste their cc (force nova on a blind/sap/sheep)Having our Paladin with either Blessing of Sacrifice or the stealth detection buff witch dot as soon as possible. Having him dispel Sheep and Nova as fast as possible. It's all about Cromagnonman skills there. Trinket only for blind or Fear is tremor isn't up. Me trinketing Fear save the two others as I will instant-pulse my tremor totem asap.

→It's all about having the open SapHaving Freakhill prepared to sap/blind combo the other rogue, letting us with a window of 14 seconds "alone" with the mage. Pressure them down to see them commit errors. If Freak is opened, it's almost finished.

→ Outlast the burstDon't be shatter-comboed. Ever. Our paladin has to be brilliant dispelling all the frozen effect from us. Grounding totem must be used only on a Frostbolt (get it out at the very last moment) as Cromagnonman task will be to dispel sheep/nova. The massive shield, Earthbind totem, Poison Cleansing totem and Frost resistance totem : try to damage-kite the rogue, LOS the mage without LOS-ing your healer (quite an art), fake cast on holy tree (Gift of the Naaru \o/) to force silence - kick CD. Try to run away. And pray.→ Prepare to unleash your burstAll targets have to be preventively purged of any buff they might have at the beginning of the fight. When a target could be focused, we will first have to stop him. Judgement of Justice, Frost Shock, Earthbind totem, Crippling Poison. We are able to stop a Druid, we are able to stop anything. Then Improved Explose armor, Wound Poison, purge the upcoming bubble and Pain Suppression (it can take time...) then burst him down in no time. Save a Grounding totem to prevent a polymorph of one of the DPS.

Personal contributionHaving farmed 27k honours points those last week, I'll have my Battlemaster's Determination trinket by tomorrow finally. I can't wait having this non-interruptible, non-limited (MS, Wound poison) heal. It could have saved our life so many times versus rogue/ice-mage focus when we were short.

I can't tell the number of times it happened to us matchs that way, me don't surviving the insane cc/burst from them, with wound poison applied. As I had to loose some HP/Resilience to play the "KILL TEH DROOD" game on War/Druid/X teams - with pretty much success -, I am not that Shameliotank I used to be anymore. No more focus casting, no more 10% resistance on frost/fire/nature damages, no more resilience cap, no more 13kHP. I gained much more dps and way better totems at this price. So this trinket will be a welcomed addition.

This week, due to Cromagnonman problems and Freakhill exams, we will probably delay our match to next Tuesday night, so we will fight a load of the T5/T6 PvEBoi. It will be a good training. Waiting for this, I'll try to do some Heroics (I still miss 6 Primal Nether for my Dragonmaw), training (aka dueling front of IF) with my Shaman and, at least, leveling my Druid.

Those gems are fairly equivalent to BT ones, and when we talk about optimizing your gear you should do no compromises at all on farmable content. I have bought lately the [Bold Ornate Ruby] for 6885 honours points and put it on my chest.I am saving now for the the Battlemaster trinket but I'll focus on obtaining the two others gems asap, beginning with the AP/Crit one.

Enhancement's problem is IMO by far the toughest; it can be kited too easily, invalidating 100% of the shaman's DPS. Making SR undispellable won't fix that, so I don't consider it a fix. Some sort of root, teleport to the target, resistance to snares, something is needed if the spec will ever be anything more than a fun thing to do in BGs and not a guaranteed 1800 rating for all but a minuscule part of the population who are talented and dedicated enough to make it work.

I hope I will be in the "chosen ones" before the beginning of WOTLK. Some have done it, I personally don't think it is impossible even with the problems that our class knows. It will begin by dealing more efficiently with RMP, we have brainstormed a lot about finding a solution lately and read some great articles on it.

And, I decided to do same as Megan and provide you my email adress if you feel to ask me some questions or whatever but do not want to write a comment :

About Me

Kind of a Diary

> 130208-13:59 - Next article is coming soon, but I've to post something on Blog Azeroth before.> 120208-10:30 - Raddy already made a excellent explanation. So now we will have less drinking spam scrubing arena sessions.> 120208-10:00 - Hum, drinking nerf ? Got to do an article about this.> 110208-16:57 - I won't play tonight, need some rest and chillin' with my gf. We will do our arena games tomorrow I hope.> 110208-16:49 - Yet another article on computer addiction> 110208-16:48 - Creation of this "slot" just to add quick news, links or thoughts.